An Economy In Meltdown!
Ok. For UK readers this is essential, for anyone else it may just be of interest.
Clouda9 told me I should make this a blog post way back on May 12th; so a full 3 months and 2 days later (yes, I know I’m a terrible procrastinator… or should that be talented procrastinator?!) anyway… Here, finally, is the said post!
So… We all like to have money, yeah? Well it seems that the UK banks have been ripping us off. If you go over your overdraft limit you can expect a fine but these charges are unlawful.
UK Legislation states that banks can only charge you the amount it costs them to administer the notification that you have gone over your limit. In simple terms, they can only charge you for the price of sending the letter and possibly, if it’s your first time, a credit check.
The usual charge for breaching your limit is up to £39 but a Professor of Banking has stated this charge should be no more than £4.50; and that’s being generous!
As for Martin Lewis; he’s a financial journalist and he runs a website which provides money saving tips for anyone, anywhere. Find out how to reclaim your bank charges, about some great moneysaving books, all about Martin Lewis and about his website on my lens; Martin Lewis And Money Saving
Tags: Bank Charges, Banks, Martin Lewis, Moneysaving, MoneySavingExpert, MSE, Saving
August 14th, 2008 at 1:43 pm
It’s worse in the USA…
Many banks also charge you for check books, you don’t even get those free. When I moved over here, you even got charged for writing more than xx checks in a month on some accounts, but that seems to have gone away more now thankfully.
Instead ov an overdraft limit, some banks create a separate account for you, like a loan for the amount of the overdraft facility. You have to pay a fee every month for this privilege. When you go overdrawn, they automatically transfer money from this account into your overdrawn one, and then you start to pay interest on the “loan”. Now when you get money in to offset the overdraft, it doesn’t then cause the loaned money to be put back, you have to remember to transfer funds to that account, and if you forget you will end up paying more interest. It results in the bank being able to charge you more, and it’s horribly complicated compared with just giving you an overdraft limit.